Aesthetics: Gorillaz

Continuing my research into what makes an iconic and memorable aesthetic, I decided to look into the official art of one of my favourite bands 'Gorillaz', the original character concepts and art drawn and created by Jamie Hewlett. 

GORILLAZ

When studying Tim Burton, it was clear that his art style and character designs held jokes or references within themselves that conveyed humor aimed more at adults, e.g. knives sticking out of eyeballs, bones showing through skin in 'The Corpse Bride' or maggots being best friends with corpses. It was the kind of humor that children find darkly hilarious and their parents can also find disturbingly funny, which I would love to also be able to convey. I feel that this double layered humor appropriate for children and adults alike would really suit the comedy of the traditional Greek play 'The Birds'.

While Burton's work created humor out of the imagery shown, the Gorillaz truly hold a much grungier and messy aesthetic, signature to the sound they create. Extremely alternative and unique in both their style and music, the Gorillaz also have an on going story line that follows them and progresses from album to album, with certain songs hinting at the mystery of whats really happening in their fictional lives.

The aspect of the characters that I really enjoy is the fact that each persona has a very deep and well developed back story, making their narratives all the more believable. The heavy stylised features also appeal to my personal taste greatly, e.g. giant hollowed out eyes, uneven and golden teeth, a very peculiar and punky fashion sense between the characters, and also the fact that with every album release we see the characters age up little by little, again adding to the reality of the designs. The Gorillaz aren't afraid to be grimy in both appearance and in sound. A few animations have also been created as side projects to the band, where the characters use explicit language; the visual aspects can sometimes be questionable also. In terms of my project, these traits are obviously not suitable for a younger audience, but the colour palettes and stylised art style will definitely be something I take into account.

The image to the bottom right caught my attention especially, as it ties directly to the kind of masks and designs I've been looking into previously, and reminds me that this imagery of the beak has been constantly recurring throughout my project research. 
I recently gave a presentation in which this concept of the recurring beak image was also considered, and the idea of creating a lab of prototypes for different mediums was discussed. This would mean avoiding pigeon holing myself into one category of making, and instead experimenting with several different areas of practise. This is definitely an option I'm considering at this point in the project. I've already done a lot of research into the industry of stop motion, but this is still an area I can dip into and a method of practise that interests me greatly, but at this moment within the project I'm keeping all options open.